Barnabas Powell's Blog, page 175
August 7, 2017
Do You REALLY Believe?
Friedrich Nietzsche declared “Faith means not wanting to know what is true.” And Fr. Seraphim Rose responds: “Atheism, true ‘existential’ atheism burning with hatred of a seemingly unjust or unmerciful God, is a spiritual state; it is a real attempt to grapple with the true God.… Nietzsche, in calling himself Antichrist, proved thereby his intense hunger for Christ.” In our modern world, gripped by what I call the religion of scientism, reduces…
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August 4, 2017
A Heart Too Small
If you have a younger sibling then you’ve heard this before: “She did it! Why can’t I?” I know I’ve heard it in my house on numerous occasions, especially when the younger kiddo wonders out loud “What about me?” But sometimes (actually, many times) the younger child isn’t developmentally ready to take on the task that her bigger sister is doing. This happened recently as one daughter was walking to her bus…
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August 3, 2017
The 100 Campaign!
Faith Encouraged is launching our “100 Campaign” today! We want to reach our goal of 100 sustaining donors in the next month. YOU can help! Please visit our Patreon page to donate. https://www.patreon.com/FaithEncouraged As little as $5 a month can help us grow our outreach and help our Church fulfill the Command of the Lord to make disciples of all nations! Your support produces results like this: Dear Fr. Barnabas, I thank…
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The Cure I Need!
When I think of our requests we make of God, I find my own requests break down into a few categories – Personal needs, Family concerns, Parish concerns, and Hopes and Fears. But one of the blessings of being Orthodox is that the wise prayers preserved in the Faith cause my prayers to ever expand to include the whole universe. The regular litanies of the Divine Liturgy and other services allow me…
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August 2, 2017
The STONE the Builders Rejected!
Welcome to the second day of the Dormition Fast! The wisdom of the fasting disciplines of the Church are meant to reinforce the reality that unless the faith is holistically practiced, that is it affects every aspect of your person, the real danger of compartmentalization exists! I know this is a constant temptation for me! This idea that the faith is only one part of my life. When, in fact, the Faith…
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August 1, 2017
It Is TRULY Right!
Everybody else was squirming. They were obviously having a hard time with the information and seemed to rather have been elsewhere. But I was at peace. It just made sense to me, I guess. Some of you know the story of how I entered the Orthodox Church. I was a pastor of a growing Pentecostal church in the Metro Atlanta area, and my best friend and I were really interested in Church…
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July 31, 2017
Led Astray by Dumb Idols
Alexandre Solzhenitsyn once said “We always pay dearly for chasing after what is cheap.” I wish I had learned this earlier in my life. I would have avoided some painful idolatries. But we humans are slow learners. And over and over again we come to the end of what we thought we could not live without and discover all too late that we certainly could live without it. We idolize the fantasy…
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July 28, 2017
Those Murmuring Hellenes (Sounds Like a Great Band Name!)
It seems we humans have an ingrained “love”of fighting, defending ourselves, and drama. We are really good at it. Just look at the conflicts that are raging today in our world. We seem to love to fight, and that, in itself, should be a sign of a deep brokenness in us. Our impulse to fight, to demand our rights, to “get even” and “settle the score” all reveal a wound in humanity…
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July 27, 2017
Four Labors that Make You Like Jesus
There’s just no substitute for contemplation. But it seems our modern world is moving at such a break neck speed that contemplation is impossible! That’s why authentic faith is the “last, true, rebellion” and the hardest and most rewarding path to being truly human! Listen to what Abba Evagrius says “A wandering mind is made stable by reading, vigil and prayer. Flaming lust is extinguished by hunger, labor and solitude. Stirrings of…
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July 26, 2017
Before Faith Came…
For years I batted around words like “faith” and “believe” with such frequency and then discovered that I really wasn’t sure what these words meant! Imagine my surprise while, as a pastor, and a graduate with a degree in Pastoral Theology that I had to humbly admit, I didn’t really get these words at all. Or, to be more accurate, my understanding wasn’t so much wrong as too small. For years I…
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