Barnabas Powell's Blog, page 51
February 11, 2022
Check Out Our New and Improved Ministry Website!
Thank you so much for being a part of our Faith Encouraged Media outreach! Our ministry website has gone through a redesign to focus on what we are doing now – written daily devotionals AND weekly videos of our homilies at our parish. Check out the new website and share it with your friends! FaithEncouraged.Org
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They Should Be Ready By Now!
An ongoing joke among church families is how long it takes to get ready for church on Sunday mornings! Of course, this isn’t true of going to work or going to school, or going to a game, or a dance or most other social and work-related events. But, when it comes to church services, well, the excuses fly! But in reality, we all suffer from this tendency to not be ready when…
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February 10, 2022
The Paraclete
Emotionally, I’m done. Mentally, I’m drained. Spiritually, I feel dead. Physically, I smile! Ever been there? Yeah, me too. So what drives us to wait till it’s almost too late to ask for help? Pride? Fear? Probably both, and then some other realities like not knowing ourselves well enough to realize when we’re getting into the danger zone of our lives. Of course, part of the problem could be we have unexampned…
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February 9, 2022
You Are SO Close!
“Missed it by THAT much.” OK, I know I’m dating myself and all my consultants and advisors always warn me when I do this I’m not communicating well to the younger generation. But, seriously, shouldn’t everyone know Maxwell Smart? Well, perhaps not. But I do know that all of us know the feeling of being so close to something that we can almost touch it! I remember the frustration of getting lost…
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February 8, 2022
Wise AND Innocent
Someone once said, “Anyone who says raising children is not the hardest job in the world isn’t doing it right!” And that is so very true. But “difficult” doesn’t mean “bad” or “broken,” it just means the task is meant to focus you and make you more attentive! And raising kids is difficult, especially in a society that has exalted perpetual adolescence to a virtue, as is the case today. The challenge…
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February 7, 2022
The Temptation of Power and Control
Michael Josephson, the founder of the Character Counts Coalition, once said “Never underestimate the power of temptation to disarm your better senses.” Very true, In fact, the central message of our Orthodox Faith is the life-long reality of becoming sober and attentive. I was recently struck by someone coming up to me to thank me for my writings and then complaining that they needed help understanding what I was trying to say!…
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February 4, 2022
You Belong to God
“Being precedes doing!” I heard the phrase and thought to myself “I’m not sure I understand what that is supposed to mean?” And, as I listened to the speaker longer, my confusion just grew. I think what the professor was trying to say was our actions flow from who we really are. And he was trying to get us to understand that it is the interior battle of slaying the “dragons” inside…
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February 3, 2022
Jesus IS Our High Priest
What is the significance of the phrase “not made with hands?” We see this in our lesson today and we even see an Orthodox icon of the same name. You know the ikon I’m talking about. It is the ikon of the Lord’s Face that the Lord sent to Abgar, the leader of the city of Edessa who had been afflicted with leprosy. The tradition says that the Lord commanded a bowl…
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February 2, 2022
The Power of The Eternal Perspective
Philosophy fascinates me! I don’t get most of it, but it makes me feel smarter just reading about it! One particular fascination is the classic argument between Plato and Aristotle. These Greek philosophers differed in the formulation of their philosophies of being. And Raphael captured their disagreement perfectly in his masterpiece called Plato’s Academy. So, why bring this up? Because our Lesson today uses language that points to a pearl of wisdom…
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