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An identity crisis
We live in a world that is having an identity crisis. We tie our identities to political parties, to work, to relationships, to popularity, to finances (or lack thereof), to gender, or to marital status. We tie our identities to anything we think might get us ahead in life. We are fighting for people to recognize us and approve of us.
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The biggest problem, though, is that everyone else is doing the same thing. We are all fighting for approval. As one author put it, “Because everyone else is also working frantically to craft and express their own identity, society becomes a space of vicious competition between individuals vying for attention, meaning, and significance, not unlike the contrived drama of reality TV” (You Are Not Your Own: Belonging to God in an Inhuman World, Alan Noble, p. 4).
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In such a vicious world full of people vying for attention and approval, where do we find ourselves as Christians?
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Join this live, online Bible study TONIGHT!
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“Is everything in the Bible true?” Is your friend asking that question because his Bible is open to the first chapter? “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day” (Genesis 1:31). Is he wondering . . .
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Clark Schultz, author of 5-Minute Bible Studies for Teens, shares his perspective on the value of getting teens involved in the church as young people: It is 1982 and Pastor Richard Pagels asks me, a fifth grader, to read the Gospel lesson for church. The following . . .
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Each of the 12 districts holds a convention each biennium, generally in even-numbered years. (The synod convention is held in odd-numbered years.) Every pastor, professor, and male teacher of the district plus a lay delegate representing each congregation attend the . . .
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