Tag: featured

Restless Heart: 8 – “The ‘Dump Him’ List”

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Dump

Nessa is in charge this week! This means, of course, that we’re talking about dating. In this episode, Nessa outlines her “Dump Him” List and I offer a few of my own dating red flags as well…

Episode 8: The “Dump Him” List (Download)

 

— Show Notes —

* The “CIH” mentioned by Nessa at the beginning is The Children of the Immaculate Heart, an organization which serves the survivors of human trafficking.

* If you would like to help feed the homeless in Downtown San Diego, here is the Facebook Page for that group.

* The San Diego C.S. Lewis reading group is The Eagle and Child.

* When we were discussing friendships, I couldn’t remember who it was who said that you’re the average of the five people with whom you spend the most time. I’ve looked it up and it turns out that it was motivational speaker John Rohn.

* We mentioned Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler during our discussion. In case you haven’t come across them before, they are characters on a show called The Big Bang Theory.

* The Conference I said I was going to this weekend is The Catholic Answers Conference.

* If you would like to win a copy of Bobby and Jackie Angel’s new book, all you need to do is follow us on Twitter at @davidandnessa.

Please subscribe to this podcast using iTunes and Google Play and if you have any feedback or would like to pose a question for an upcoming episode, you can send us a message from the website or tweet us at @davidandnessa.

Sundays in Scripture

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Seventh Day Adventists (SDAs) believe that Christians shouldn’t worship on Sundays and that the Saturday Sabbath is still in effect. In recent weeks I’ve been having a discussion in a Seventh Day Adventist in response to my post Why do Christians worship on Sundays?  The exchange has been good and I think it’s well worth a read and I’d invite you to check it out.

Sunday

I haven’t had much interaction with SDAs before and I hope to do some posts looking at their more interesting doctrinal positions, of which there are quite a few. However, in preparation for this, today I would simply like to do a post where I catalogue all the places in the New Testament where Sunday is mentioned:

1. The Resurrection
All the Gospels record the Resurrection taking place on Sunday (Matthew 28:1-7; Mark 16:2, 9; Luke 24:1; John 20:1).

2. Resurrection Appearances
Jesus appears to His disciples on Sundays (John 20:19, John 20:26).

3. Pentecost
The original Pentecost took place on a Sunday (Lev. 23:16) and therefore so did Pentecost in the New Testament (Acts 2:1). On this day the first sermon is preached, three thousand convert and are baptized.

4. Preaching and celebrating the Eucharist
In Paul’s travels, it is recorded that the Christian community came together to hear Paul preach and break bread (Acts 20:7).

5. Gathered collections
Paul instructed the Corinthians to gather their charitable donations on Sunday (1 Corinthians 16:2).

6. Vision of Heavenly Worship
Jesus gave the apostle John the vision of Revelation on the first day of the week (Revelation 1:10).

Inside Room 24

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Room24I was fortunate enough to spend Christmas 2015 with my family back in England. One of the many things I enjoy about taking trips to England is the plane ride because the time spent at 30,000 feet is usually very productive! I’m not sure if it’s simply because I’m stuck in a seat for nine hours, or because people are waiting on me hand and foot, but for whatever reason I tend to get a lot of writing done. The fruits of previous transatlantic plane rides have included my series on Catholic dating, the top 11 reasons why every man should learn to dance and, one of my personal favourites, the article which explains how the He-Man cartoon teaches transubstantiation.

This last return trip to the States was a little different, however. Rather than spending my time writing, I spent it reading. Over the course of this flight, I read Room 24: Adventures of a New Evangelist by Katie Prejean from cover-to-cover. The book is available through Ave Maria Press and Amazon, and hopefully after you’ve read this review you’ll go order a copy, visit her website and follow her on Twitter.

On the return flight to America, I had the entire row of seats to myself which made for a much more comfortable flight. As I write this review, I am once again on a plane, this time from New York City, and once again I have the entire row of seats to myself. Now, I’m not promising that if you buy this book it will automatically entitle you to extra leg room, but please allow me a few minutes to explain why I enjoyed this book so much…

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Quick Apologies

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I’ve recently had a couple of people tell me that they like my blog because my posts are…short. Well, I guess there are worse compliments you could get! Seriously though, one of the reasons that people seem to come back to my blog is that my articles are rarely very long and therefore easily readable during a short coffee break.

In light of this, I’m going to start doing something new. I’m now going to try and post a “Quick Apology” most weeks. These will be articles on apologetics, but they will be short and snappy. The goal is to help readers better defend their faith by consuming bite-sized posts.

I’ve often found that when I’ve been called to give an account for my faith (1 Peter 3:15), I am rarely granted much time to give a response. There isn’t time to offer a thorough explanation or refutation. Instead, I have to give an “elevator pitch”, a short 30 second response. That is how these posts will be structured. I will present an objection to the Catholic Faith and then give an extremely short response designed to answer the objection and open up the conversation to further dialogue.

In my next post I’ll respond to the objection given by some to calling Mary “Mother of God”…

One Minute Book Review: C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography

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This last weekend I finished C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity: A Biography. Just to be clear, this isn’t a biography of C.S. Lewis, it’s a biography of a book he wrote.

George Marsden recounts the genesis of what is probably Lewis’ most famous Christian apologetics book, Mere Christianity. He traces how Lewis’ talks to the RAF transitioned into radio addresses on the BBC and these were converted into three separate books which were ultimately collected together under the single title “Mere Christianity”. 

It was interesting to hear the criticisms which were offered at the time against both Lewis and his arguments by skeptics, as well as the reception of his work over time among different Christian denominations. 

If you like learning about C.S. Lewis, but want to read something a little different from the usual popular biographies, I’d thoroughly recommend this book!

Catholic Bucket List #1: Visit an Eastern Rite Parish

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Lists and buckets

I’m a big fan of lists.

Seriously, lists are brilliant!

A little while ago, there was a film released called The Bucket List, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson. In the movie, both characters are diagnosed with a terminal illness and, as a result, they decide to write a “bucket list” – a list of things which they want to do before “kicking the bucket”…

If you google “bucket lists”, you will find them on many blogs. If you read a lot of them (and I have), you start to notice some commonalities among them. As in the film, the common theme that runs through all of them is that they are attempts to really try and experience the depth and breadth that that the world has to offer and to truly suck the marrow out of life.

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Is England in London?

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Yesterday I uploaded to Facebook a picture of a can of Boddingtons as my profile picture. This prompted a childhood friend of mine to go on a lovely little rant:

“Hmmm, since when has Boddingtons originated from ‘Britain’? Was it brewed in Scotland, N.Ireland or Wales? I don’t think so! England!!!!!!!! You can bet your life if it was a Scottish product it’d say imported from Scotland on it 😀 Plus… If the collective ‘Britain’ really has to be used they should at least have the decency to use the ‘Great’ at the beginning of it! Phew… Sorry- Rant over! PS  I guess I should be grateful that it doesn’t state ‘Imported from Europe’ on it :-D”

I told him that if this sort of thing bothers him, he shouldn’t move to the USA!

I find that Americans are usually rather flummoxed when it comes to knowing the difference between England, Great Britain and the United Kingdom so I thought that today I’d offer a brief explanation…

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