Beth Cavete

No greater joy, my friends. No greater joy. 3 Jn 1:4 (My valentines, a little late) ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

They stopped at an Italian restaurant on the way and ate spaghetti together. Two of them fell in love as a large man sang with an accordion.

How little that man knows of the God who will “by no means clear the guilty.” What terrors await him. Jail is nothing compared to the wrath of God. Where is the Church: telling souls this most basic truth rather than the exact opposite??? I am so so sorry for your nephew’s nephew. May the Lord HEAL and restore and renew him and save to the uttermost.

@BethCavete A youth minister down South is now in jail for molesting my nephew’s sister’s son.

Ministry is not 1) to fill a yawning need for attention 2) qualified for by being entertaining: “charm is deceitful” 3) worth ANYTHING when the minister is no more mature than the ones to whom he ministers What does that leave of what we commonly call “youth ministry?” Good question.

We live in a culture that has a level of comfortable familiarity with Gospel facts: “Someone called Jesus was a precious little baby and died and rose again bc God loves us, amen” As long as we don’t tell a story of being dead and corrupt in our sins Implicating, especially to religious people, that so are they And that the real Gospel carries the POWER to kill that sin on the Cross And generate a NEW creation, who is no longer like them (whether “THEY” are pious or profligate), They will not mind your preaching and even dress up on Easter to hear it. But if you tell them, as Paul did the religious Jews and the Corinthian pagans, That the kingdom of God is not of talk but of power (1 Cor 4:20) , and testify that when you broke over your sin, His power filled you with New Life, Then you will be hated. Praise God. Preach the GOSPEL. “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” 1 Corinthians 9:16

The Gospel will always bring hatred and mocking, But without the transformation testimony “He made me NEW” It’s just information. PREACH THE GOSPEL AND LET THEM GNASH THEIR TEETH. It may be tomorrow they hear and turn! “For if I preach the gospel, that gives me no ground for boasting. For necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” 1 Corinthians 9:16

Isn’t it weird no one’s mad at this?

@realTT1776 What can be done for our beautiful state?

If you're from Colorado live in Colorado or have been to Colorado Please share a picture of or in Colorado! And if I'm not following you, I will! Together We Win!🙏🏻🇺🇸💯

@RealMaxit Thank you, Lord

I committed suicide in 2015. I drank a 5th of whiskey, a bottle of wine while downing 30 serequel pills and 20 clonopin pills. While I was waiting to pass out and never wake up, a voice told me "Michael. call 911" I was almost incoherent in my thoughts. The voice was insistent now "Michael, call 911". I never talked to myself in the 3rd person. It was weird. I looked at my hand. The phone was there. I was never a phone person. I don't know where it came from. I dialed 911. I explained to the person I had done the pills and drink. She asked if I could make it to the door. I said I could. I walked to the door and went outside. There was a police car driving up at that same moment. It was as if it was meant to happen. He asked for my ID. I gave it to him. Then I was gone. I remember a little about being transferred to an ambulance. I woke in a hospital bed 2 days later. I was happy. I could not understand it. I was happy. I felt good. I was telling jokes and having a good talk with the hospital staff as they were getting me ready to be transferred to a mental hospital. I finally understood how the Lord saved me. I have never been the same, since. I can't explain it. I was saved and saved. I am not worthy but I was spared hell. I got healthy. I went from 250lbs to 170. I read my bible. My non military PTSD was a thing I could deal with without pharma. I now take no meds. So, here I am, alone, no need for social appeasement. Only to gather the lay of the land and make dumb posts, sometimes. May you all be blessed as I have been. Thank you, Lord.

@KJP I don’t know how X matched this post to me, but I am absolutely delighted. I totally get this woman. (First things first)

It’s quirky little things she does like this that make me fall in love with her all over again. Happy 24 years together today ❤️

Also interesting that we could not give or receive a fraction of the pastoring in that church that our sons have. Why? Bc the framework for discipleship doesn’t govern their notion of the church…except with youth. So I will be the first to say the structure even in this best case scenario is all wrong.

Having come out of a church which embraced Contemplative Spirituality, I learned that both youth groups and music were/are being used as the gateway through with CT is being introduced to the church. I'm sure that are many wonderful, godly youth pastors out there, but I think it's a vulnerability in the framework of the church.

@JulesDiner 💯 true. Absolutely.

I’m by nature a hardcore idealist, so I really relate to this notion being best! In our real lives, there is a youth pastor in our sons’ lives who is one of the best pastors I have ever met, and alongside us has shepherded, discipled and instructed them with such uprightness, despite his youth…we are forever grateful. So in that sense I say, I will take the real thing any time, any place, by any name.

@BethCavete I'm sure I'm the odd-gal-out, because I don't believe there should be youth pastors. I think we should all be in church together, as a family.

@JulesDiner NONE

How much should any professional, whether it be a teacher, a coach, a counselor, a pastor, be making skin-to-skin contact with children?

@JulesDiner Too many churches think that’s what youth ministry is. Give it to the guy who never grew up.

@JulesDiner At BEST, someone as immature and foolish as any youth, and so in no state to be “ministering” to them.

Without sharing context, what are your first impressions of this photo? The man laying on top of the boys is a youth pastor. If inappropriate, why? If not, why not?

@MegEBrock Yes yes yes ❤️

Waiting for a flight and found a sweet note from my daughter tucked in my backpack. There’s nothing better in the world than to love and be loved. Nothing. No experience, status, or wealth compares. I certainly don’t deserve this kind of love but I’m so thankful for it.

@garonnevik HALLELUJAH AMEN.

People have various comfort levels in sharing things, and there's nothing wrong with that. Some of it is cultural. Some of it is the family you grew up in. We learned early on in our marriage the power of sharing our story. That first year was rough. We were in a small group of young married couples, and one time on the way to our gathering, I asked if I could share with the group how much we had been struggling. He said he thought that'd be good, and as we were vulnerable with the group, it opened up a door where all the couples started sharing real things. The pretense dropped. Real friendship met us there. That experience is why we are pretty open about our lives, especially as we both work within churches. We are often the first to share or be vulnerable, to lay the groundwork. I share a lot about my family, but I don't ever want to throw them under the bus. My husband has joked more than once that he hopes he can live up to the man I portray him to be on social media. I told him I don't say anything untrue! Yeah, he'll say, but it's not the whole truth. I recently turned in my 3rd book to my publisher, and as this book talks about a difficult season of our marriage as a brief illustration, my publisher wanted my husband to sign off that he was ok with it. He doesn't always read what I write, because he says he hears me talk about it non-stop that reading it feels redundant. But he sat and read the chapter where he came up. When he was done, he said, "You could have said so much more. This was restrained." Me: "I didn't want to throw anyone under the bus." Him: "Sometimes I wish you would just let it rip. So many other people come into play in all of this. Sometimes I want you to throw all of them under the bus--the whole lot of them." Me: "But that would distract from the point I was making. They arent' the story. You weren't the story. I was talking about my own experience. But it could be perceived, perhaps, not knowing the whole story, that it paints you in a bad light. People might fill in the blanks incorrectly, and you need to know that." Him: "Oh, I don't care about any of that. Where do I sign?" Knowing what to share, and who to share it with are often really difficult judgment calls. But here's one thing I know: you can't share your testimony of God's grace and look good doing it at the same time. You can't. You can't say, "I was an awesome person, and God made me even better!" "Being a good person is kind of my thing, so I just drifted into Christianity." That's not it. We fell into sin, we are oppressed by sin, we are trapped in sin. God saved us. As Christians, we still mess up, and God grace is so steadfast that it's work cleaning us up is an active thing. You can't share a testimony and make yourself look good at the same time. That's why they're so hard.

@christopherrufo @EWErickson Most of the people you're arguing with have never read a book about chattel slavery, many haven't read any books about anything and some think history is faked by the Jews to keep them down.

Even the concept of "toxic masculinity" grew out of the industrial revolution. Before that, most men worked with their wives and children all day, on the family farm, the family industry, the family business. Surprisingly, most of the literature on parenting and childrearing was addressed to fathers. Today if you go to a bookstore, most of them are for mothers. But in the colonial era, fathers were just as involved with their children as mothers were. Historian John Gillis writes: “Not only artisans and farmers but also business and professional men conducted much of their work in the house, assisted by their wives and children. They all ate and prayed together; they got up and went to bed on the same schedule. . . . Men “were as comfortable in the kitchen as women, for they had responsibility for provisioning and managing the house." We talk about housewives, but they also talked about housefathers. The cultural expectation on men focused on their caretaking role. Masculine virtue was defined as “Duty to God and Man.” How did we lose this concept of masculine virtue? The Industrial Revolution took work out of the home. Men had little choice but to follow their work into factories and offices. For the first time, men were no longer working with their family--people they loved and had a moral bond with. Instead, they were working as individuals in competition with other men—a very different work environment. In the literature of the time, people began to protest that men were changing—they were losing the caretaking ethos of the colonial age. They were becoming ego-centric, self-interested, aggressive, greedy, acquisitive, even turning financial success into an “idol.” This is when we first see negative language applied to the male character.

Abuser: *Says and does terrible things* Witness: Stop! That’s wrong! Enabler: Quiet! You’re causing division. Sound familiar?

@LowerLeavell This is godly male leadership.

Side note, this is also a plug for the plurality of elders.