Coloring Book Spirituality

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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and I can help you out. I think you can only order up to 10 on the website. So there.

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For a while I was writing a lot, and now it�s hard to write when you have a radio show, right?

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Okay, what do I want to talk about today? Adult coloring books emerging as popular spiritual practice.

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And when I mean adult coloring books, I mean regular coloring books that adults like to use as they contemplatively pray.

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This has nothing to do with inappropriate, you know, rated X coloring books.

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This has to do with a spiritual practice. It says here, September 15, 2015,

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Jeff Brumley writing an article for BaptistNews .com, BaptistNews .com.

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I thought it was funny when I was using the Google GPS in Italy, they were pronouncing things with the

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Americano accento, por favor, si.

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Using crayons, colored pens, or pencils to focus the mind while praying or to contemplate scripture can be as beneficial as walking a prayer labyrinth or creating an icon, says

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Ministers of Spiritual Formation. That's a subtitle. Well since the prayer labyrinth is absolutely good for nothing, actually it's negative, then this is just the same?

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Is that the way I'm supposed to go about this? Adult coloring books. So now we have coloring as a spiritual discipline.

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Does Don Whitney, I don't think he's going to add that. I'm pretty sure he won't add that, thankfully.

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The new spiritual disciplines book is updated, and I'm thankful for that. I don't know how long ago it was written, 20 years ago?

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I think I had that book in seminary for a class. Now updated, good for Don, appreciate that.

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In fact one person, according to the Baptist News, told Religion News Service she traded in church attendance for coloring.

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I bet you did. I trade in Hebrews chapter 10 because I like to color.

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Now when I used to color, here's what I would do, true story. I had a lot of Tarzan coloring books,

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Daniel Boone coloring books, Davy Crockett coloring books. I had some, oh

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Fred will like this one, Space Ghost coloring books. But the thing is, did

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I say Batman? Batman coloring books. I loved boots, and maybe it was

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Daniel Boone kind of deal, but I always put boots on the people even though there was no outline for boots.

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Maybe they had little, maybe Robin, you know Batman and Robin. I think Robin wore little toms before toms was popular.

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I don't mind wearing toms, I just think if you're a man and you wear toms and capris, you got a problem.

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I'm going to consider you with letters, put you in letters categories, put a bunch of letters put together.

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Some people stopped going to church, oh coloring, me, coloring, boots, so I'd always put boots on there.

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And sometimes I notice when people color, they first take the color and you know those boxes, 64

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Crayolas, those ones you can eat, the overseas versions, the made in China ones you don't want to eat,

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I think there's poison in there, some arsenic or something. I would highlight, you know some people highlight the entire thing, then color in lighter.

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So there's different ways to color, I think it's a psychological analysis when you see how people color, they color outside the lines.

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Didn't Glad sing that, color outside the lines? I think they did. Is that the name of the band, the acapella

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Christian band that is now defunct? Is it Glad? Maybe, maybe.

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Apparently, said Jeff Brumley, the reporter, the practice of intentional, prayerful coloring produces enough spiritual insight and experience to render churchgoing unnecessary for some people.

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Apparently, allegedly, a number of spiritual formation ministers and a university scholar told

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Baptist News Global, I'd like to maybe get a job at Baptist News Global, how would one go about doing that, huh?

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That such practices can indeed be spiritual and not new in the history of Christianity. What's more, they're not even too far out for some

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Baptists and other Protestants who want to act Catholic and follow Beth Moore contemplative prayer.

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Oh, sorry, I didn't say that, that was just the rambling host back from his trip to Italy.

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I went far and wide to see the Vatican and the Vatican Museum, and I was looking for the special relic boxes, but lo and behold,

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I found a coloring book that the Pope had colored. You know, they sold his iPad for 30 grand, and if I only had the

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Pope's coloring book, that would be something, wouldn't it? Ain't that something? Well, Matthew chapter 6 tells us a little bit about prayer, doesn't it?

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And when you color, don't color the way the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be noticed for their many colors.

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Do not be like them, for your Heavenly Father knows what you need before you color.

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Color them this way. Now, I felt a little sacrilegious as I was reading that.

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That wasn't good. I didn't like it. Repent. Don't be like them, for your

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Heavenly Father, your Father knows what you need before you ask Him. Pray then like this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

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Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.

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And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

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Can I just be a little no -co right now? This is dumb. When the

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Bible isn't enough, when prayer isn't enough, when you have to use your mind to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and once you start down the labyrinth road, that's going to get boring.

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And then you got to do something else. You have to have taste, touch, tangible senses, tactile.

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How many Ts can we get in a row there? This is the religion of Rome. This is the religion, if you want tactile, go to the very best, and it was called the

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Old Testament Temple. And there was smells and bells and it was all the right thing and it was beautiful and it was wonderful.

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There was nothing like it. But now it's over. I kept thinking when I was in the Vatican area and the museum and St.

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Peter's and St. Paul's and a variety of different other places that I went to, I kept thinking of Indiana Jones.

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I know, I know it's a stretch. And when Indiana Jones, I think it was the third one, he had to pick the right chalice.

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What did Jesus drink from on the last supper, the first communion? Remember the guy, he picked the gold, wonderful, bedazzled, bejeweled, can you say bejeweled?

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Bedazzled, I know is a word, but bejeweled. He picked that one and he chose poorly.

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And yet, when Indiana Jones, because he's the hero, he knows what to do. He's a no -co man,

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Indiana Jones, no -co man. He, Indiana Jones, picked the carpenter's cup.

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I think it was just wood. I want to say it might have been cedar, but I think it was just wood.

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You have chosen wisely. That's what I kept thinking about.

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I kept thinking about the book of Hebrews. And we know, professing

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Christians, you're tempted to go back to all the tactile, to all the sights and sounds.

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And you prefer IMAX, but you've got Jesus and so walk by faith, not by sight.

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This praying, I mean, if you're going to color, let's say you're a grandma and you're going to color with your kids.

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I can't wait to be the grandpa and, hey, let's color. Let's put some coloring crayons on the table and let's color.

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Okay. You know what? I can't wait. I haven't colored for years. But to think it's a spiritual discipline, it is stupid.

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It's ridiculous. It's asinine. What are we doing? But when the Bible's not enough and regular prayer isn't enough and you can't devote yourself to prayer like Colossians 4 says, then this happens.

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Jane Davis, a minister of spiritual formation at First Baptist Church in Wilmington, North Carolina said, oh, this is going to be good.

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There's been a lot written about art as prayer, the visual arts as means of prayer.

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When I stand and I see Rembrandt's The Writings on the

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Wall in London, you know what I do? I say, that is awesome. And I could actually probably pray.

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God, you're awesome. You make people and they're image bearers and they're creative.

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I could pray when I look at art. I could see the top of the Sistine Chapel and there's the creation of the world,

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God creating Adam and God creating Eve through Adam and then all the popes up there too, you know.

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But that's a different show. Don't get me bogged down in the details now about the

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Sistine Chapel and how we, if we don't have a written document, if we don't have a literate group of people, then we use visual aids and then we just slip a few popes right in there next to the biblical narrative and you think they're both authoritative.

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Hello, I said hello a lot in Israel and in Italy and if any other country that I went to that starts with an

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I. Oh, I was just in Ireland. True story. The practice is comparable to the increasingly popular prayer labyrinth, those that are walked or traced by finger.

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So I guess you get a little maze and you know, kind of in one of those books and you just trace it with your finger and then you pray because it quiets the body and the spirit too, she said.

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Well, how do you determine truth? Well, for folks like this, it's by your own experience and it says here, according to the writer at baptistnews .com,

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Davis had her own experience of how coloring can be spiritually beneficial. She was in an ambulance on the way to the hospital with chest pains.

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I don't want to joke about that. Test found her problem was classic stress and so she came home and there was a coloring book and crayons on the table and just quote, the sight of the coloring book and crayon filled me with peace, end quote.

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Okay, if you're busy and you want to slow down and you want to color, okay, fine. Grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, brother, sister, you want to color, fine.

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But once you turn it into contemplative prayer, once it's turned into Lectio Divina, once it's turned into praying in color, 2007 book,

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Sybil Macbeth, I know I'm not supposed to go personal on people and ad hominem, but I don't need to doodle and color and then pray for sick people.

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This is not how I roll on No Compromise Radio. Maybe you want to roll that way. Maybe that's why you like Beth Moore or Francis Chan or somebody else who may be more prone to doodling.

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I don't think either of them have said publicly that they doodle, but contemplative prayer people they are associated with, in my opinion.

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Who's this Scready guy? Michael Scready, Minister of Spiritual Formation at Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

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Now I have to tell you, if you're a Baptist church and you're called Freemason Baptist Church, you need to change your name.

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You don't even have to get rid of the Baptist. It doesn't have to be turned into Bible, but just get rid of Freemason Street.

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Now that is a definite no -no moment. Freemason Street Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia.

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He said, you know, why are coloring books such a big seller?

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Maybe I should do that with NoCo, NoCo Books, NoCo Man Coloring Book. Clearly people out in the world are longing for something real, an encounter with the divine, the great mystery.

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And there are a lot who do not experience that on Sunday morning, he added.

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Churches should be centers for experiencing the divine. I got a headache.

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The writer of BaptistNews .com, what's his name again? Not blaming him. He's just reporting the news.

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Jeff Brumley said, praying while coloring can provide these experiences, those experiences, because it puts the rational mind on hold.

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Oh, no, this is not the author of this. This is Blake Burleson, Senior Lecturer at the

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Religion at Baylor University. Co -editor with Scoretti of the 2012 book,

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Intemplating Baptist Wisdom for Contemplative Prayer. Intemplating. Well, let's see.

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I know I'm a nobody, ask my wife and kids, but I've been to the

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Master Seminary, took a class at Talbot Seminary. Hold that against me.

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I've been to the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. I've taken a

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DMIN class or two or three at Ligonier Ministries. I've taught at Southern Seminary, helped out grade some preaching, some sermons at the

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DMIN mentor level at Masters, and an adjunct faculty at European Bible Training Center.

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I want to just jump into a Beach Boys song right now, I get around. But I've never heard of intemplating.

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You think out of all those schools that they would teach me of the intemplating. I don't know.

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I had some intemplation once and then the doctor cured me of that with whatever those medicines were.

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The second you say, put your rational mind on hold, I'm gonzo. And you need to be gonzo as well.

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Even when Jesus at the simple Lord's Prayer, our Father in heaven, thinking about God as Father, our

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Father, it's corporate. And He's a Father and He's a Heavenly Father. He's holy. He's different.

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Everything about His name is to be hallowed. He's not like us. He's transcendent. See how immediately, without notes, without commentary, just thinking out loud, coloring silently, you begin to use your mind.

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Your kingdom come, your will be done. It's all about you, God, on earth as it is in heaven. You're a king.

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You're going to bring this kingdom here. And in light of that, the bigger prayer request, we do have needs and you're a father, so you'll hear those as well.

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Give us this day our daily bread. Makes me, makes me have a headache.

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Go to a Christian bookstore today. This is the kind of stuff that sells because it's something that you do. Burleson, whether it's writing poetry or painting or sculpting or whatever, we sort of drop down a bit.

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To me, that's a contemplative practice. Every religion uses art to express itself, whether it's an icon, a

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Mandela, Mandala, sorry, calligraphy, or a cave painting.

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In Protestantism, we trust the ear. We want to hear the word from the pulpit. But for Catholics and the

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Orthodox, the eye is very important. Colors and shapes get them into the imaginal world. That's the word it says there, imaginal.

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The imaginal world, the imaginal line. No, it says imaginal. Don't you see?

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It's even by his own admission. This just brings us to Rome, brings us to the East, brings us to mysticism, brings us to not orthodoxy in contrast to heterodoxy.

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It brings us into orthodoxy that is Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic stuff, Eastern Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, Greek Orthodox.

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Did I already say that? Greek Orthodox. It's a way to refocus our attention on scripture and takes our head and puts it in a more imaginal framework.

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Again, I do quite a bit of study in my day, and I don't know what imaginal is.

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I don't know what intemplative is. What if you're intemplatively imaginal? Get rid of your mind.

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That's smart. Not. N -O. In our lives, we can get bored with certain forms, so using a different part of our brain to assess scripture, access scripture, it may just liven us up a little bit.

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So, here's the Abendroth response. When the Bible's not enough, nothing is. Nothing is.

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Is it hard to pray? Yes. Is it difficult to pray? Yes. Was there, if there's an easy way out so we could just make it easier, would we be tempted to do it?

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Yes. Yes. But I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to become a

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Roman Catholic. Now again, Jeff Brumley, he's an assistant editor of Baptist News Global.

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How he got the job, I don't know. But see, I'm envious because that would be a nice job to have. I'm not saying he believes any of this.

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He's just reporting the news. That's all. Adult coloring books. Now, if they're

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Tarzan, it's okay. Did you know Tarzana by Encino was named after Tarzan?

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Now see, that's much more important than any contemplative news. Contemplative drawings.

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In New England, that's what we say. We don't say we draw. Yeah, we do. Oh, this is bad.

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If you'd like to order a book called Sexual Fidelity No Compromise, you go to NoCompromiseRadio .com

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and you order it and you can draw all over it. You can just draw until your heart's content.

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You can draw stars and shapes and signs and little fish.

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Actually, the next show I'm going to do is talking about the evolutionist new book called Grandmother Fish. And you wiggle for a while and then, hey fish wiggle, you wiggle.

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You must have been a fish. One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish. I could draw on that.

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I could draw. I could color. Now you can go get the

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GLAAD song, Color Outside the Lines, or type it into YouTube. And off you go. As they used to say on the

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Honeymooners, and away we go. But I'd rather say to the moon. Was it Ethel?

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Or am I conflating all in the family? What's his name?

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Who is the guy in Honeymooners? Jackie Gleason.

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What was his wife's name in the show? I don't remember. Anyway, Mike Ebenrath here, No Compromise Radio. You can write us at info at nocompromiseradio .com.

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Thank you for listening. Instead of asking for money, we just asked that if you've been blessed, why don't you tell your friends who have money.

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We're very thankful. God bless you. With Pastor Mike Ebenrath is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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