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Category: #resource

How to Better Understand and Deal With Anxiety

What Is Anxiety? Adam Young, a licensed clinical social worker and author of the podcast, The Place We Find Ourselves, describes anxiety as the experience we feel when our bodies has a deep reservoir of “unfelt emotions.” Anxiety is often linked to experiences in the past where we’ve disallowed ourselves to feel and experience certain emotions such as grief, sadness, or anger. Because we’ve pushed those important emotions beneath the surface, anxiety is the feeling of not allowing ourselves to experience those core emotions. Apple PodcastsSpotify Anxiety is not the same as fear. Fear is the emotional response we feel…

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Takeaways From The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill

I have to admit, I didn’t know anything about Mars Hill Church or Mark Driscoll before listening to “The Rise and Fall of Mars Hills“, a podcast production by Christianity Today. And it is good storytelling—dramatic, sad, hopeful, and thought-provoking all at the same time. It narrates the arc centered around Mark Driscoll, one of the pastors and founders to Mars Hill Church in Seattle. It details how his charismatic personality and strong vision grew the church to megachurch status but simultaneously contributed to its collapse in 2014. It explores themes of leadership abuse, the dangers of Christian “celebrity” pastors,…

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Engaging the Asian American Community: TikTok and Podcasting

This post is purely a shout-out to some of my friends. One of the things I aspired for this blog was to generate or spark conversation. And one of the things I believe in passionately in is the simple act of sharing stories within the Asian American community. There’s a lot of value to exposing yourself to different perspectives and intentionally learning about the experiences of others, which I admit that I don’t do enough of myself. I was listening to my friends’ podcast the other day (below) and was reminded of how nice it is to simply hear someone…

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Manage Your Energy (Erwin McManus)

Erwin McManus from Mosaic church in LA has been preaching a series on self mastery. Many Christians have a misconception that self mastery is the opposite of “putting your faith in Jesus” or “fully trusting God” with your life. McManus offers that alongside that there is also a way God made us to be the product of our own choices and to take ownership over our life choices. What is self mastery? It’s recognizing that we were created to have agency in reaching the fullest potential of who God created us to be. Being a person of self mastery means…

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3 Things the Church Never Taught You About Sex

The church doesn’t talk about sex enough. And by talk about sex, I mean really talk about sex—not just warn young people against premarital sex, quote randoms bits of Scripture from 1 Corinthians, or talk about “God’s design” for procreation and marriage. I mean, get into the nitty gritty of what Christian sex lives actually look like, what newly married couples can expect attempting intercourse for the first time, and how sexual desire should fit into the lives of married people post wedding-day. It seems like in an effort to denounce fornication and adultery, the church has spent so much…

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How to Recognize a Vision from God (“Different, Harder, Longer, Better”)

John Mark Comer from Bridgetown Church has a sermon entitled: “Different, Harder, Longer, Better” talking about dreams and visions from God, what role God plays in our dreams, and what to expect when we think we have a dream from God. He shares about four aspects to a dream or vision from God: different, harder, longer, better, and how we can see each of those characteristics exemplified in the story of Joseph’s dream beginning in Genesis 37. Four Characteristics to a Dream From God Different. Joseph’s dream about his brothers bowing down to him fails to include Egypt, Pharaoh, years…

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The Danger of a Single Story

I recently watched this highly inspiring TED talk by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, a Nigerian author and speaker, who talks about “the danger of a single story.” Stories have the power to influence and to shape. Stories inform our beliefs and they also shape perception of the truth. A single story, therefore, twists and misaligns reality to that single perspective and lands us with stereotype or incomplete “half-truths.” She describes several of her experiences from childhood as anecdotal evidence: growing up reading American and British stories in Nigeria, she heavily internalized the contents of those stories as representative of ALL stories.

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Church as Non-Transactional Family

I’ve been trying to read various different Christian books lately that are authored by people who are not white men. One of them is At Home In Exile, by Russell Jeung—Asian American Studies professor at SF State and incidentally, someone connected through the sister church that started my church, who has come to preach for us a couple of times. His book memoir details his narrative living in East Oakland’s “Murder Dubs” neighborhood, and finding solidarity and community with the Latino and Cambodian refugee families there. I found one particular passage particularly scintillating for me:

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God Cares About Changing Laws

Has anyone ever noticed that God cares about justice? As I’ve been reading through the first couple books of the bible again (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and now Deuteronomy), I’ve been noticing just how much of the text by sheer volume is dedicated to societal laws. When Yahweh, the God of Israel, calls Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt so that they might live a different way of life, in worship of him, he calls them to be a radically different society from the one they were just in.

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Fighting Racism is a Marathon, Not a Race

I have a rather pessimistic view on human nature as inherently selfish and sinful. Left to our own devices, I think humans tend to be self-absorbed. I wanted to take the opportunity to bring back two quotes, one from an article about performative allyship, and one from a conversation between Ryan Kwon, a Korean pastor, and Léonce Crump Jr., a Black pastor from Atlanta, Georgia about racial reconciliation. I’ll share both below and then give my own commentary and reflection.

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