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Category Archives: Opinions

Dedicating or hesitating?

I attempt to keep my eyes and ears open to learn about the Holy Spirit and human behavior. In my spiritual journey, the situations I’ve encountered through counseling and teaching have graciously allowed me to see the importance of walking in humility through the awareness of God’s presence.

I’m not implying that I’ve arrived at a spiritual plateau where God and I float through the clouds together, but I do believe we can be as close to Him as we desire to be. To be honest, the more I discover about His written and specific will, the more I realize I have hardly scratched the surface of pleasing Him.

I’ve learned that our rebellious human nature loves being independent while God is constantly trying to reveal to

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Sign up for free college courses

In an attempt to keep brain cells active this winter, I have signed up for a college course. The good news is that it’s all online and it’s free. The other good news is that it’s sponsored by a major university.

It’s called Open Courseware, and I found my class on the internet. Yale, Harvard, MIT, Stanford and many others have “massive open online courses,” also known as MOOCs, and their main purpose is to provide learning opportunities. You have to appreciate MIT especially. They make

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Asking an expert about economic anxieties

The stock market took a nosedive last week because everyone panicked over the revelation that inflation had jumped by a whopping one-tenth of 1 percent in August.

Seems pretty crazy to me.

So I thought it would be a good time to check in with my favorite economist, the esteemed author of “Baptists and Bootleggers,” the only non-football Clemson person I know who is famous enough to have his own Wikipedia page, Bruce Yandle.

In addition to being a Dean Emeritus of Clemson University, he was once executive director of the Federal Trade

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Homeless vets still need help

Right about now the weather is cooling off. Or, if it hasn’t, it soon will. Before we know it, hard winter will be upon us. As of this year, there are 38,000 homeless veterans who will be living outside in that weather.

Homeless people make up 7 percent of the population, but 13 percent of the homeless population are veterans. Over half have a disability. Nearly three-quarters have substance abuse problems. Fully half

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Are we in control or being controlled?

There is much to be desired when it comes to spending time alone.

It’s only been in the last few years that the floodgates of voices have been opened to everyone at any time. Yes, we can see there have been written scrolls from thousands of years ago, and books were printed around the year 1200, but this information was not widely circulated.

Through the years, printing continued to expand and when newspapers became available, the masses were given a new realm that would inspire and influence their thinking. Take for example, in the early 19th century, when

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Bidding farewell to Queen Elizabeth II

It’s easy for us Americans to make fun of royalty and all the flummery that props it up, but it does make me sad to mark the passing of Queen Elizabeth II.

So what does that have to do with Pickens County, and why should you care?

Well, for one thing, I’m pretty sure that the majority of residents of Pickens County, myself included, can trace their ancestry back to Great Britain. So it’s our heritage.

Of course, many Pickens Countians, myself included, can also count among their forefathers some who fought the redcoats sent over by Elizabeth’s fourth great-grandfather, George III.

But we’ve been friends with the Brits for quite a while since then, so I say best wishes to the new monarch, King Charles

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Will we follow God or the world?

Christians are accountable to love and pray for their family, and friends, and against evil everywhere, but unfortunately, many have lost the enthusiasm and the burden to ask God to set them on fire for His glory.

If Christian leadership is afraid to declare war against Satan and evil strongholds and principalities, how can they be inspired or have the faith to become a living sacrifice for God? When there is no difference between a spiritually blind world and those who claim to be God’s front-line warriors, society falls deeper into spiritual

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Maximizing your meals when the larder is empty

I learned of a neighborhood group, six seniors, who are trying to keep themselves fed against all odds. They’ve come up with a brilliant plan: At the end of each week they pool whatever foods they have left over and have dinner together. They split the leftovers to take home.

The woman who told me about this talked about a website she discovered where all manner of ingredients could be entered, with the machine scouting the internet for recipes that could be created using those ingredients.

Whoever created the SuperCook website (www.supercook.com) did a fantastic job. Meats, grains, fruits, vegetables,

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An old dog learns a new trick

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.

That may be true of dogs, but not people.

This story is about a musical technique, but the lesson could apply to any endeavor.

So here’s my case in point:

I made a decision when I was 16 years old that I would never try to play bottleneck slide guitar because I would never be able to do it anywhere near as good as Duane Allman.

Duane had mastered the slide guitar. He had such a clear and sizzling tone and played with such high energy, it

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Building with living stones

As a Christian faith writer, I am blessed with God providing me with spiritual insights and considerations to relay to others.

He creates opportunities for me to share, however, what I do is not anything more special than how millions of other Christians are serving Him, and I humbly acknowledge that most are more talented and effective than myself. I’m just a small piece of a large puzzle, one voice among many who is pointing toward the one who has all authority, who created everything and knows everything.

I can honestly say that I’m consumed with writing about God and the Christian life, and my testimony includes

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