Tuesday Round-Up

Hello everyone,

I am taking a bit of break from the usual newsletter this week to focus on the upcoming Women’s Retreat this weekend! Please keep us all in your prayers as we drive up north, and seek to encounter the living God in a powerful and mighty way. This year’s theme is “Made for War” and I have been putting all of my energies into meditating, learning, and figuring out how to share this word with all of the women coming. May the Lord use my voice as his mouthpiece in the name of Jesus!

I am going to use this opportunity to share a few sermons and articles that really touched me these past two weeks. Consider it a Tuesday Round-Up :)

______________________________________________________

One of my guilty pleasures is my various newspaper subscriptions, perks of being single with some discretionary income. Because most of these articles are behind a paywall, I’m attaching them for you here so you can access my PDF’s, let me know if you have any trouble!

I just love a good testimony. The Atlantic published an article by John Fea, titled “What I Wish More People Knew about American Evangelicalism” and it’s this beautiful homage to his Dad who’s life was radically changed by the Gospel in the 1980s. Because of his Dad’s conversion, John’s childhood went from a bitter one to a sweet one, and his Dad became an exemplary man in every way.

Click on this link here to access my downloaded version.

The second article that recently took me by surprise, was the New York Times running an Op-Ed that actually looked at de-transitioners and considered their stories and their opinions as something that could be legitimate. There is a move of de-transitioners posting their stories on stories on Youtube and such, but they haven’t been able to get the attention of mainstream media outside of conservative circles. The stories are tragic—kids who were desperately in need of mental health services, but instead were unquestionably offered life-altering medical procedures instead. I once heard a great quote from one of these de-transitioners to the effect of, who ever thought that a mental issue could every be fixed by physical means? Ain’t that the truth.

I remember the Washington Post released a short column about six months ago, but this NYT piece seems to have gained more traction. Of course the blowback has been insane, but I applaud that there seems to be some common sense piercing through the dark smoke. We do not allow our children to smoke, to drink, to vote, to drive, and a vast number of other things because they’re too young. Why would we allow them to make life-altering changes to their bodies without any consideration that we don’t trust them to make other ones on their own volition. It’s absolute bonkers.

You can access that article here to read.

Last but certainly not least, I heard about this random worship conference happening in my backyard about a month ago, with Steffany Gretzinger as the headlining artist. Of course I signed up immediately, and was not disappointed!

They did a great Q&A with Steffany, and of course she came across gracious and as committed to the Lord as ever (watch her Green Room Podcast interviews!) but I was not expecting for Michael Bethany, the worship leader out of Gateway Church to absolutely blow my socks off. This man was so anointed, not only in his worship, but in his heart and devotion to the Lord. It’s very hard to upstage Steffany, but Michael came along and really gave her a run for her money in terms of heart and anointing. Not that it’s a competition of course!

Listen to his sermon from Session 1, beginning at the 1 hour 16min mark.