All posts tagged: Enemy

The Emperor’s Enemy by Jasmine Mas

The Emperor’s Enemy by Jasmine Mas

Published by Jenni Sidey

A twenty-three-year-old recruit is strapped upright to a gurney in a white room beneath a desert military base. A needle in her left arm drains her blood into a bucket. A needle in her right pumps something back in, dark red and threaded with silver, from a tank beside her. This is the Iron Ritual, which two people have survived in the past century, and she asked for it. She asked for it as a reward, for carrying an insufferable classmate out of a canyon on her shoulders. The Emperor’s Enemy by Jasmine Mas opens with a woman volunteering for a procedure with a rounding-error survival rate, and it never once implies she has made a mistake. The Con at the Heart of The Emperor’s Enemy Zora Ravenal is a hunter from the frozen North, two months into the Crimson Army and already famous. In a forest back home she put a bone dagger through the Empire’s most feared Royal Mage and dragged him back through the snow as a prisoner. There is a painting …

How women pastors became public enemy No. 1 in the SBC

How women pastors became public enemy No. 1 in the SBC

Published by Sam Flores

ORLANDO, Fla. (RNS) — In the first summer of this century, more than 11,000 Southern Baptists gathered in Florida to update their convention’s statement of faith by limiting the office of pastor to men only. But that 2000 limit was not binding on local churches. Instead, it applied only to the denomination’s seminaries and mission boards. “We don’t have the right, the authority or the power to limit anybody,” the Rev. Adrian Rogers, a famed Baptist preacher who chaired the committee that revamped the Baptist Faith and Message, told reporters at the time. “We would resist that.” Al Mohler, head of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, agreed. “We would never presume to tell another church whom they may call as a pastor or tell another person whether or not they may serve as pastor,” Mohler, who also had served on the committee, told Baptist Press, an official SBC publication, in 2000. “We’re not trying to force our beliefs on someone else.” Some churches left the SBC and joined groups such as the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which …

Defeating the Enemy Within

Defeating the Enemy Within

Published by Sam Flores

By Andrew Hopkins In this article, I am sharing an excerpt from Chapter 7 of my book Fierce Peace. This book is about living in God’s peace that is stronger than every storm. We often think of trials as the things that wear us down, break us, or introduce fear into our lives. But what if trials don’t put weakness in us—what if they simply reveal what was already there? Scripture shows us that the real battle we face isn’t external; it’s internal. The enemies we see on the outside often serve to expose the greater enemy within. Let’s take a deeper look at how fear, not external opposition, is often the real giant standing in our way. Defeating the enemy within I’m a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis and while the movies don’t always do the greatest job following the narrative of the books, I still like watching them. In The Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie, the magician who helps the kids find their way lets them know …