Tag Archives: psychology

A Psychology of Temptation

Posted on March 24, 2020 by ehurst

What does God really expect of you? Cry out to Him the moment you sense temptation coming at you. Of course, you first have to invest time and energy understanding what temptation is, and that requires you understand what sin … Continue reading →

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The True Guardian of Souls

Posted on February 18, 2020 by ehurst

I won’t tell you that your heart will protect your mind, only that it can. There is a large body of clinical literature on the power and limits of verbal manipulation. It works best when practiced by a certain group … Continue reading →

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Can’t Make This Short

Posted on October 29, 2019 by ehurst

When I served in the US Army Military Police, I quickly became aware that there were a select few who were protected by system, while most of the rest of us were expendable. While that protection rested mostly on commissioned … Continue reading →

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Divine Decentralization

Posted on July 24, 2019 by ehurst

Make the connection here; it’s pretty simple. DIY, decentralization, doing things in-house — this is a part of the essence of holiness. Anything that frees you up to obey the move of the Holy Spirit, often in contrast to what … Continue reading →

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The Task Is Departure

Posted on May 27, 2019 by ehurst

Just as a reminder, I tend to favor Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis as a model for human psychology. There are multiple models out there, and no one of them can explain everything. That’s because the human psyche is inexplicable in … Continue reading →

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Commonplace Schizophrenia

Posted on April 8, 2019 by ehurst

Schizophrenia is an affliction of degree, not of kind. Every human is born with multiple personalities, typically in the form of personas. This is the norm. We have to be different people to the various folks we encounter in life; … Continue reading →

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Faith and Pedophiles

Posted on March 18, 2019 by ehurst

What happens when a pedophile becomes a heart-led servant of Christ? If you go by the experience of mainstream American Christianity, you don’t have a clue. The mainstream churches have no plan for dealing with moral and spiritual recovery of … Continue reading →

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Understanding Spiritual Gifts 03

Posted on February 22, 2019 by ehurst

2. Motivations (Romans 12:3-17) This is another open list, but we can’t discern any additions until we understand well enough what Paul delineates here. The list of temperaments could be translated as prophetic, servant, teacher, encourager, giver, elder, and caregiver. … Continue reading →

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Understanding Spiritual Gifts 01

Posted on February 20, 2019 by ehurst

I’m not sure where this teaching arose, but I first encountered it in the mid-1980s while testing the waters with a charismatic church. The experimental church fell apart, but I learned an awful lot about the mythology of neo-pentecostalism. If … Continue reading →

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Pastoral Psychology and the Heart 04

Posted on December 30, 2018 by ehurst

Moral truth was firmly established before Creation. The fatal flaw in choosing the Forbidden Fruit is that the human intellect is utterly incapable of being objective. Reason leading to objective truth is just a myth. Inevitably the traffic feeding into … Continue reading →

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