Noah Filipiak's Blog, page 16
June 17, 2019
Ep. 11 (or 73) Interview with Kevin Butcher on shame, suicide, when God doesn’t heal us, suffering, ministry burnout, & the Father’s love
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play
In episode 11 (73), Noah interviews Kevin Butcher, Noah’s identical twin, give or take 30 years. Noah and Kevin are both 8’s on the Enneagram, ENFP’s, D’s on the DISC, church planters in the inner city, entrepreneurs, authors, and podcasters… look out! (And they both have 3 daughters…that’s just eerie) Kevin’s similar wiring to Noah has made him a great mentor. Kevin is the executive director of Rooted Ministries, a nonprofit designed to come alongside isolated and discouraged pastors. If that describes you, reach out to Kevin at www.rootedministries.co
Kevin was a lead pastor for 35 years – most recently the founding and lead pastor of Hope Community Church of Detroit, a messy fellowship of human beings from every kind of racial, economic, and educational background who own their emptiness and pursue healing through the love of God in Jesus Christ. In 2018, after 16 years at Hope, Kevin launched and became the executive director of Rooted Ministries, Inc.
Kevin is passionate about helping believers live in authentic community — across racial, socioeconomic and all lines of division — learning to truly love one another in the chaos of real relationships, learning to celebrate our differences, and learning to stay together even when we don’t like one another – so that the world will see a living picture of Jesus Christ.
He is also passionate about helping believers find healing and freedom from childhood wounds — the ones that often keep us trapped, living addictively and in deep dysfunction – unable to experience true freedom in Christ. Kevin has come to believe this kind of deep healing comes only through personal, transformational experience with the powerful love of God in Jesus Christ.
Show Notes:
Choose and Choose Again: The Brave Act of Returning to God’s Love (NavPress) by Kevin Butcher
https://www.rootedministries.co/podcast
The post Ep. 11 (or 73) Interview with Kevin Butcher on shame, suicide, when God doesn’t heal us, suffering, ministry burnout, & the Father’s love appeared first on by Noah Filipiak.
June 11, 2019
Podcast Ep. 10 (or 72) (Looking at all the facets of…) David Platt Prays for Donald Trump on the stage of a worship service
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google PlayEpisode 10 discusses the June 2nd scenario of Pastor David Platt praying for President Donald Trump from the stage of a McLean Bible Church worship service. You probably already have lots of predetermined feelings about this, so rather that write something that will make you listen (if you agree), or dismiss this (if you disagree), go ahead and listen and see if there’s a different way to approach topics like this than you are used to.
And a tragic day in Flip Side history, there is no Noah’s Rant! This turned into a “double episode” length-wise so sit back, catch some corn, and enjoy!
You can support the podcast at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak or www.noahfilipiak.com/give
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The post Podcast Ep. 10 (or 72) (Looking at all the facets of…) David Platt Prays for Donald Trump on the stage of a worship service appeared first on by Noah Filipiak.
June 1, 2019
Podcast Ep. 9 (or 71), The Poverty Gospel vs. The Prosperity Gospel
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google PlayEpisode 9 compares the “Poverty Gospel” to the “Prosperity Gospel,” two opposites that both end up reflecting legalism. The conversation leads into tackling some very tough words of Jesus, and the ageless debate between faith and works.
Noah’s rant addresses online password systems that don’t let you use special characters.
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SHOW NOTES:
Podcast episode #1 (or #63) – The Flip Side Pilot – Health & Wealth Theology / Prosperity Gospel
Blog article: A humble, biblical look at health & wealth theology (the prosperity gospel)
The post Podcast Ep. 9 (or 71), The Poverty Gospel vs. The Prosperity Gospel appeared first on by Noah Filipiak.
May 23, 2019
Jesus’ Words Get to Determine what He Meant by “Love,” You Don’t
Jesus’ love is trending in the Church today. But on closer inspection, it may not be Jesus’ after all.
I hear a lot of Christians talk about Jesus’ love, but when I read Jesus’ quoted words about his love, I get two contrasting pictures.
The trending (and trendy) Christian definition of Jesus’ love is that people should get to do whatever they want, and if you tell them to do otherwise, you are very unloving. It gives a picture of Jesus as a lovesick puppy frolicking through first century Palestine passing out daisies and giving green lights to all in his path.
This is not the picture of Jesus I see in the gospels at all.
At the end of the day, I’m just tired of people saying, “Jesus says ABC about love,” when there are direct quotes from Jesus that say exactly the opposite. If you want to say you say ABC about love, that’s fine, but don’t falsely slap Jesus’ name onto it.
I read this recently on social media:
Being Christlike often requires us to be unbiblical. Just one example – an eye for an eye is biblical. It is not Christlike.
If your focus is on following the Bible you will live one way. It will involve rules, complex interpretations of the contradictions between parts of the Bible as well as some very hard to understand ancient stories of genocide.
But the Bible points us to Jesus. He made it both simple and at the same time very hard. He left three rules for his followers based upon the premise that God is love and all other interpretations of God missed that.
1. Love God.
2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
3. Love each other as he loved…
…Jesus, not the Bible is our final authority. How do we know this? The Bible tells us so.
We have gotten to a point where it is Jesus OR the Bible, not Jesus AND the Bible. Even though Jesus himself goes out of his way to affirm the Bible (including the parts referred to here as genocide) as explicitly as possible:
“Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished. -Matthew 5:17-18
We are not under the old covenant of the Old Testament anymore, we are under the new covenant in Jesus. The Old and New Testaments are clear that when the Messiah comes, the law of the Old Testament won’t apply to us anymore, we will get a new law from Jesus. (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 8:1-13). But even in the new covenant, Jesus continually affirms that the Old Testament is inspired by God (Matthew 22:43) and he quotes it over and over again as such.
Even if you wanted to make the thin argument that we should throw out the Old Testament because of the new covenant, you certainly can’t throw out everything Jesus said in the gospels! Yes, Jesus said the greatest commandments are to love God and love your neighbor as yourself (directly quoting the Old Testament, ironically), but he said a lot of other things too! These two commands do not negate all of the other things he said. Quite the contrary, if Jesus is a consistent and true teacher (which he is), then all of the rest of his commands and teachings give the specific, flesh-and-bone ways that these two greatest commandments to love will be lived out. His teachings and commands show us what his definition of love means. Let’s also not forget the Great Commission where we are specifically commanded by Jesus to “Go…teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.” (italics mine, Matthew 28:18-20). Everything means everything.
If we separate Jesus from the Bible, then we can “love” however we want. Do the following teachings of Jesus sound like love to the modern ear?
Those who don’t put their faith in Jesus will definitely not be saved (John 14:6). Jesus describes hell as an eternal place of fire and torment for unbelievers (Luke 16:19-31). He even tells us to fear the one (God) who has the authority to throw us into hell. (Matthew 10:28; Luke 12:4-5)
Jesus affirms that sex and marriage are only between one man and one woman. (Matthew 19:4-6)
Getting remarried after divorce is adultery (unless the initial divorce was a result of the other spouse committing adultery). (Matthew 19:9)
If you have looked at a man or woman lustfully, you have committed adultery. (Matthew 5:28)
There’s a lot more we could include in this list. This is just a sampling of teachings today’s “Everything is permissible” Church (see 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 for that reference) doesn’t have a category for (a different list could be written for the biblically conservative Church who isn’t loving their poor, refugee, and immigrant neighbors). While we must love LGBTQ individuals and be sympathetic toward their struggle, I get very tired of the attempted Christian argument that God wouldn’t restrict who you can love (have sex with), when in Matthew 19:4-6 God does exactly that. While we don’t rejoice in people going to hell, I get very tired of the Christian argument that God is so loving that none will go to hell or that it doesn’t exist, when God says explicitly otherwise.
A friend on Facebook is always posting about how God’s love is open and affirming toward homosexual sex relationships and shame on the conservative Church for being so unloving. This same friend just divorced her husband when he was trying desperately to make the marriage work. Yet we are all about love? Love being a difficult, lifelong, one-flesh commitment or love meaning I can sleep with whoever I want. Because that sounds really tough. Not sure who would ever be drawn to that.
Maybe Jesus was so confused because he was a 1st century Jew that everything he said was primitive and wrong and bias and he just couldn’t overcome this to say something that was actually a word from God…don’t count on it. Or if that’s your Jesus, good luck!
2 Timothy 4:1-5 is so true:
In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge:2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. 3 For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. 4 They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. 5 But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.
What’s crazy is to see such huge swaths of the Church no longer preaching the word, no longer correcting, no longer rebuking or encouraging toward right living. But instead becoming the people who don’t put up with sound doctrine. The people who want to suit their own desires and become the teachers who will say what their own itching ears want to hear.
Why does God restrict us as a way of loving us? It’s the same reason loving parents restrict their children. Thanks to her older sisters, my almost two-year-old has discovered what candy is. We have a candy bucket in our house from various holidays and school parties. My one year old has observed her older sisters eating their allotted one piece of candy per day. So of course she scales the kitchen counter, grabbing two fistfuls of suckers, Jolly Ranchers, and the like from the bucket. I let her have one sucker and take the rest away. She throws a fit! The trendy Christian today would tell me if I loved my child, I would give her back both fistfuls and let her enjoy. This isn’t love. I understand the context of candy in relation to a one-year-old and out of love, withhold, making sure she eats a balanced diet instead. This is what God is doing to us when he gives us his commands on love. He is the creator of all things. He is the authority. And no, it’s not fair. (Thank goodness his mercy and grace aren’t fair!) The parent gets to determine what love looks like, not the child. The child can rebel against the parent, but needs to stop going around saying, “My dad said…” when the dad never said. Especially when this Dad, our Father in Heaven, is the author, creator, and embodiment of love itself.
The post Jesus’ Words Get to Determine what He Meant by “Love,” You Don’t appeared first on by Noah Filipiak.
May 17, 2019
An attempt at a fair look at the abortion debate
In an age of all out social war over issues like abortion, this is an attempt at a fair look at the debate. It’s an attempt to not shoot missiles at the other side, hoping the same can be done in return.
The debate about abortion hinges around several key disagreements:
When is a fetus considered a human? (alternative wording: when does a fetus have a soul?)
Women’s rights (in tension with baby/fetus’s rights)
“Birth control” abortions & extreme cases like rape, incest, death of the mother, etc.
I am a man and will never know what it’s like to be pregnant. When I have sex, I do not have to take into consideration that it might make me pregnant for 9 months, with a baby to care for and nurse thereafter. I also acknowledge the way women have been abused by men throughout history in macro and micro ways. My goal is to be as objective as possible and as sympathetic as possible to both women and babies. It seems like the pro-life view is “babies only” and the pro-choice view is “women only.” It’s probably more convenient for both sides to think that way, and is one of the reason there is such little common ground. I hope we can care and talk about both women and babies. Women should have the voice on what happens to women, but men and women have equal voices on what happens to babies, for babies cannot speak for themselves.
When is a fetus considered a human?
A popular pro-life view is that life begins at conception. (“Life” = the soul begins at conception; the baby is a human being at conception)
A popular pro-choice view is that life begins once the baby is viable, once it is able to live in the outside world independent of its mother. (22-27 weeks)
Let’s throw both of these out as arbitrary conclusions for right now. Yes, both can be argued for, and argued for passionately as they usually are! But they are also both discussion killers. Let’s start by saying, “We don’t know when a fetus becomes a soul.” Because, in truth, we don’t know. This will sound a little crude, but we can all agree that a pile of sperm and an egg are not a soul. And we can all agree that when a baby comes out of the birth canal, it has a soul. So somewhere in between those two events, it becomes a soul-filled human being with accompanying equal rights as a human.
Pregnancy Tracking Websites for Moms
Since I’m a man, I’m going to defer to women here. There are lots of pregnancy websites and mobile apps out there, created by women, for women, that help a woman track her pregnancy. I just picked a random one with the help of Google (Kaiser Permanente).
The women who make these websites and the pregnant mothers who are using them obviously believe their 5 week fetus is a baby, a human being. You don’t fall in love with tissue. Women track their whole pregnancies this way, with these websites offering cute size comparisons along the way like “Your baby is the size of a blueberry…,” “Your baby is the size of a fig…” Yes, a fig. Some couples start giving their growing child a nickname to go along with one of these size comparisons during these phases that ends up sticking.
Miscarriages
My wife had a miscarriage when the baby was at 7 1/2 weeks. It was her first pregnancy. That was six years ago and she recently told me she thinks about and mourns for that baby every single day. She also expects to see that baby in heaven someday, and tells our living children the same.
How hurtful it is to women who mourn the miscarriages of their lost babies when the pro-choice movement tells them they did not lose a baby, but only some tissue. Like it’s the equivalent of getting your appendix removed. This is not coming from the perspective of a man, it is straight from the mouth of my wife, and on behalf of many women she knows who have had miscarriages in their first trimesters, who will always live with this void. I am a man, but I am allowed to loudly echo the voices of women, standing up for them and with them.
The viability of baby away from mother determines human status
According to a 2015 New York Times article, a baby can be viable at 22 weeks at the earliest. Pro-choice advocates often use the viability test to determine between if a baby is a fetus (non-human) or a human. While some babies aren’t viable until 27 weeks (thus at 26 weeks would be non-human), we’ll use the 22 week mark as our measure. With this measure, it means a 21 week baby (pictured) in the womb is a non-human fetus and not a human baby.
A 3D ultrasound at 21 weeks. The baby sucks it thumb, yawns and mother can feel its movements.So back to our initial question of when a baby becomes a human being… The pro-choice position is that the 21 week old baby in the photo to the left is not a human, and thus can be terminated. This is different from killing a one-week old infant out of the womb because that infant is a human with rights. Keeping the humble position that we don’t know when a baby gets a soul / becomes human, assuming both “at conception” and “at viability” are arbitrary guesses, look at this photo and ask if this yawning, thumb-sucking, kicking bundle of intricate beauty and complex organs is a human baby or a non-human something else.
At the crux of the abortion debate is human rights. We all acknowledge a woman has rights, but we also all acknowledge that a woman or man do not have the right to kill another human (if we agree with the murder and homicide laws of our country). If a baby is a human, it must have rights; this is why people who kill their infants end up on the front page of the newspaper and in prison for many years. If it is a non-human, it does not have rights. With a mother and a baby’s rights, one cannot be superior over another, as this is the definition of any type of oppression: one using their power to gain advantage over one with less power.
Killing the child within a pregnant mother counts as homicide or manslaughter in 38 states
In 38 of our 50 states, if the child within a pregnant woman dies in a violent act against the woman, it is considered homicide or manslaughter. (If the mother dies too, it’s a double homicide) That’s because these babies are considered human beings by these 38 states. Yet they can still be aborted; no problem.
2/3 of those 38 states apply the homicide / manslaughter law to any length of the pregnancy, even the earliest stages, while the other third apply a number of weeks when these laws take affect. See National Conference of State Legislatures website for details.
Statistics: different reasons given for abortions
A very strong factor in abortions to consider is women who have been raped, including incest, and women who would lose their lives if their baby was born. These are some of the strongest, and sometimes only, argument from the pro-choice perspective. These are extremely valid women’s rights concerns.
Less than 1/2% of the abortions surveyed are done because of rape. 4% are done because of physical health problems to the mother, though it’s not reported what percentage of that 4% would be fatal to the mother. 3% are done because of fetal health problems. It is an anonymous survey, which gives relative assurance that these women were being honest in their responses (thinking of the argument that a victim of rape would not want to share this information).
This leaves over 92% of abortions being done for reasons other than women’s rights or health rights. They are done for matters of convenience. Some call this using abortion as birth control. It also leaves 99.5% of abortions being done for reasons other than rape.
An interesting side note: a woman’s life is not guaranteed in abortion either. In 2012, four women died as a result of complications from known legal induced abortion; between 1973-2012, 427 women have died as a result of legal abortion (CDC).
The point of this is to say, can we not all agree that the 92% of abortions done as birth control need to be illegal? This does not include the strong moral case that a baby with a health problem (3%) has a right to live just as any other human does (that would take the percentage up to 95%). The strong arguments given by pro-choice advocates for women who have been raped or whose health is at risk simply to not apply to a vast majority of abortions. These are two separates arguments and they need two separate sets of support points given.
In cases of rape / incest
Here is a compromise some on the pro-life side will not want to make, but is necessary to protect women and to find some workable common ground we can hopefully agree to move forward on. I’m not saying I fully affirm this ethically, I’m saying it’s the closest thing to a workable solution that both sides could potentially agree on, based on their core arguments:
If abortion was made illegal, the morning after pill would need to be free and easy to access. This means no doctor’s visits, no prescription, and essentially no questions asked. This would address the majority of the rape cases. For the few that do not use this resource due to emotional trauma, or whatever other reason, last resort abortions for rape could be offered on a legal basis. The woman would not have to go to court for this, but they would need to submit paperwork to their doctor reporting the rape, where she would be encouraged, but not mandated, to press charges. If only ~0.5% of abortions are happening because of rape, and many of these could be addressed with free morning after pills, allowing this exception would reduce abortions from the 1-2 million number per year to possibly a few dozen.
In cases where the mother’s life is at risk
Another needed compromise: if a doctor (not a judge) deems a mother will die in childbirth, she can opt for an abortion.
Trusting Women to Choose
Here’s a meme I saw recently:
Two point to bring out here: One is that a baby doesn’t get a choice (again, the oppression argument of one with power usurping it over one without power). And two, not all people, men or women, can be trusted. Why do we fight so hard for a person’s right to choose when we see these same people (human beings, that is) making choices like:
Teen charged with murder after throwing her 2-pound premature baby out a second floor window
No one is fighting for these women’s right to choose. No one should trust their judgment. This is not to say women can’t be trusted, but it would be foolish to say all women, or all men can be trusted. It’s why we have murder laws in the first place. It’s why we have any laws at all. Every murder is justifiable to the rationale of the person doing it, and they feel is their right to choose. Fighting for the right to choose in and of itself is not noble.
Regret and the Oppression of Women by Abortion
Many women regret their abortions (And I know many won’t don’t. But that doesn’t negate that many women do.). They wish they had not listened to their boyfriend or their parents or their doctor and they will never forgive themselves. They were oppressed by these outside forces to make a decision they would not have made otherwise. As a result they become strong pro-life advocates, supporting many women to choose life. They tirelessly volunteer in pregnancy resource centers and in advocating for legislative change. I’m not saying this is the case for all women who have had abortions, I am saying it is for many. Related: the “Roe” woman (Norma McCorvey) from Roe v. Wade is a huge pro-life advocate now and has committed her life to overturning Roe v Wade. These voices need to be heard as they strongly disagree with the idea that abortion liberates women and it’s not fair to women as a whole to lump them all together into one category.
Pro-Lifers Need to be more than Pro-Birth
I need to mention how I hate the two party political system. I hate how Christians typically have to choose between saving babies lives on one hand, and saving refugee and immigrant lives on the other, as well as other biblical principles of helping the poor. I’m not saying the Democrat politics for helping the poor are perfect, I’m only making the observation that usually that side of the aisle leans that way.
One of the main reasons people get abortions is because they are single moms in poverty and don’t have the means to raise a child. And a child in their lives would derail / compete with the little provision they have for themselves in getting their basic needs met. You can make the argument that they shouldn’t have chose to have sex outside of marriage. I do think this is a valid argument and should not be dismissed. But it’s also not that black and white. I am not in a position to describe the pressure a single woman in poverty might feel to have sex with a man for any number of feelings of security, acceptance, or just plain pressure from the man, or the many situations that could present themselves where birth control wasn’t used or didn’t work.
My point is, if systemic poverty didn’t exist, many less women would choose abortion. There are plenty of affluent women who choose abortion, and even married couples who choose it. But to the point I’m making here, if Pro-Lifers, specifically Christian Pro-Lifers took the Bible more seriously on the need to love and support the poor, there would be less abortions. This is not an argument to make abortion legal, but it’s a justified effort to point out some hypocrisy in the Church and on the Pro Life side in a lot of cases. There’s a new phrase that I’ve heard in some Christian circles and it is that, “We are Pro Life…from the womb to the tomb.” What this means is we are Pro Life for all of a person’s life. Not just a righteous effort to make sure a baby gets to be born (which is noble and needed), but then to wash our hands of the deadly circumstances that baby is born into. I’m not naive enough to think we can solve systemic poverty, but we need to be consistent in our biblical beliefs and righteous efforts. “Womb to the tomb” means we don’t want anyone to die: not babies, not moms, not refugees, not immigrants, not in euthanasia. Some would add war or gun control to this list, which is an argument with merit. While I know I’m throwing some powder keg topics out there, my hope is that we can stay focused here on Pro-Life advocates being more than Pro-Birth. It stains our testimony, it gives Pro-Choice people a valid argument against us, it’s not consistent, and it’s harming real people. And if we want to decrease abortions, an additional great way to do this is to do whatever we can as individuals and as a system to support vulnerable mothers and to change the tide of systemic poverty. There are many pregnancy resource centers and homeless shelters for pregnant mothers in my city, most of them run by Christians. They likely exist in your town too. You need to support these organizations. You need to consider your politics around these issues, as difficult / impossible as that is in a bipartisan system. You need to be personally vested in the lives of those who are living under these circumstances.
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Podcast Ep 8 (or 70) Catch-Up Episode!
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google PlayEpisode 8 gets caught up on the mailbag and all Flip Side happenings and shenanigans. Mailbag covers Game of Thrones and unsettling parts of the Bible. Some previews of upcoming episodes, a ranking of which episodes have the most listens, and of course Noah’s Rant, which takes on fitted sheets. Lots of fun (and some good content) had by all.
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Noah’s sermon on the book of Revelation: https://vimeo.com/172643620
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May 15, 2019
How Mercy Unfolds, by Guest Author Daniel Arnold
Every day I tear up overwhelmed by the love of Jesus expressed at The Outreach (of the City Rescue Mission of Lansing), located at 601 North Larch Street, Lansing, MI, 48912.
Walk up to the drop-in door, anyone, between 6pm and all night. People are gently ushered in with Jesus’ love. Not everyone has an intimate relationship with Jesus, but they experience the love He has for us spoken in volumes through practical hands and feet ministry.
The same staff member who recently mopped the floor of the Outreach spent a great deal of time reaching out to me in prayer using his gifting of exhortation. The Outreach is a team effort to welcome in society’s rejected, including discombobulated drunks and the mentally afflicted acting out.
Scriptural signs hang from the wall at the Outreach to show lasting encouragement from the past when City Outreach was in place under the direction of Mark Bozzo. This one from Proverbs 16:7.“It’s significant. It fits the need of the people in the area (Male, 63).”
“I feel safe here. I don’t have to roam the streets. I have seen a couple of my friends froze to death. It’s not a pretty picture. No human being deserves to die alone—not even your worst enemy (Male, 42).”
The beacon of safety: The Outreach rescues people who may die otherwise. They create a warm atmosphere and don’t push their faith on anyone.
One female City Rescue Mission Staff Member likes to get out art supplies to help clients relax. Homeless women feel comfortable here.
“It’s a nice safe place for women, lots of coffee. A Christian, quiet atmosphere, clean good place to rest. I met kind, friendly smiling staff people—non-intrusive (Female, 59).”
We the clients of the Outreach believe in the building. Many of us knew the Founder of City Outreach in the same location, Mark Bozzo, and remember his heart to see no one fall through the cracks. Every life matters.
“They are so generous, compassionate, gentle, very kind-heated, sincere in all they do for everyone. They don’t turn anyone away.”
Q: “What is it like to sleep there?
A: I was very relaxed. I was so happy to have a place for food, sleep, warmth, cleaning, drink, bathroom, shower, and laundry. Their love and compassion; you knew they were of Christ (Female, 59).”
Q: What is the Outreach like?
A: “Same as when Bozzo was there. The only thing different is everything is remodeled. They do snacks in the morning and night. They have showers every day. Once a day they do laundry. They are going to be open all day. The only reason it opened early because there were people freezing on the streets.
When Bozzo was around they breathalyzed. They don’t do that anymore. Basically the Outreach is for the people that sleep outside under the bridge and have addictions.
“They got cameras all over the place. It’s more advanced and they got security (Male, 42).”
The Outreach fills a niche and serves society’s broken at a sacrifice to City Rescue Mission. The Men’s Shelter stopped serving lunch so there would be the budget available for CRM Outreach to “Be A Rescuer” to dying people.
Please help. Show unconditional love. You are not required to get your hands dirty unless you want to. We can go to bat for hurting people and give tax-deductible donations on a one time or continual basis.
Share the love!
Kind Regards,
Daniel K. Arnold
E-mail: voiceoftheunheardlansing@gmail.com
Daniel has lived in Greater Lansing his entire life. He is author of more than ten books, multiple online publications, and specializes in investigative journalism for the glory of Jesus.
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May 8, 2019
Ep 7 (or 69) Noah interviews Troy High School classmate Matthew Thornton on following Jesus after a life of “Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll”
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google PlayIn episode 7, Noah catches up with high school classmate Matthew Thornton, who is following Jesus after living a life of (in Matthew’s words) “sex, drugs, and rock & roll” that began at age ten and led to full blown alcoholism and accompanying depression at age 21.
Noah and Matthew attended the same church (where Matthew’s dad was pastor) in sixth and seventh grade. Gotta love this photo of Noah and Matthew from 1996, the summer before 8th grade, at Christian camp:
We polish off the episode with Noah’s Rant taking on dudes who don’t wash their hands after going to the bathroom.
You can support the podcast at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak or www.noahfilipiak.com/give
Struggling with online porn? Use promo code BEYOND for a free 60 days of Covenant Eyes.
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April 20, 2019
Convo on the Undone Redone Podcast about my sexual brokenness and finding wholeness in Christ
I had a great time on the Undone Redone Podcast with Tray and Mel Lovvorn. Check out Undone Redone for tons of great grace-centered resources to bring wholeness to your marriage and/or sexual brokenness.
Click here for the podcast episode.
The post Convo on the Undone Redone Podcast about my sexual brokenness and finding wholeness in Christ appeared first on by Noah Filipiak.
April 17, 2019
Ep. 6 (or 68) The debate around if Game of Thrones is porn or not
Listen below or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play
Game of Thrones kicked off its 8th and final season this week. The Flip Side presents the debate on if GOT is porn or not.
Noah’s Rant takes issue with using “How are you?” as a greeting…
New mailbag question for listeners: What parts of the Bible are the most confusing or unsettling for you? Email your answers to podcast@beyondthebattle.net
You can support the podcast at www.patreon.com/noahfilipiak or www.noahfilipiak.com/give – when we hit 10 supporters, Noah won’t shave for a month. 20 supporters = handlebar ‘stache for a week.
Struggling with online porn? Use promo code BEYOND for a free 60 days of Covenant Eyes.
Show Notes:
Get 30 days of VidAngel (where you can filter out sex scenes and nudity from TV shows and movies) at www.noahfilipiak.com/vidangel
Game of Thrones as porn: Producer calls viewers his “pervert audience”
If you are watching Game of Thrones, you are watching porn
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